


The Constant

by DierdreSundance



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 10:30:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14692332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DierdreSundance/pseuds/DierdreSundance
Summary: Loras is mentally and physically broken after weeks of confinement. And that's when Renly appears.





	The Constant

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my main lenguage, so I apologize in advance if there's any grammar mistake.

Loras barely felt his body flinch at the sound of the door. He shrunk his hands, grasping the last remaining bit of gnawed cloth covering his chest, and closed his eyes, tired, trying so hard to fade away.

He didn't know how long had it been since the last time. He didnt konw how long had it been since they had put him into that hole. Days and night were always on repeat in the darkness. Notion of time lost among the endless minutes, lying under the coups, the burns, the cuts. It had been two days without eating, even thought the bowl with a kind of infected slipslop was still reposing by the door. Loras hadn’t even touched it. Hunger was something that could no longer affect him, and he calmed the thirst dosing a jar of water in which only a few drops were remaining. Loras managed to take what was required not to perish. Just that.

The steps raired his ears like rumbles. They stuck like knives inside his eyelids, increasing the migraine. He lifted his lips before putting them back together, realising that he had no words left.

He let a moan out when a hand stroke his head and murdered the rest of them inside his throat. The friction had been so surface and soft that he believed it was part of his imagination. He had gasping breaths and tried to rise. His hands supported miserably his weight once he got to get on his knees and turn his face.

‘Loras’ a voice called him. And he could just hold back the tears for a couple of seconds.

Renly was standing in front of him, whit his armour untouched and the crown still resting on his head. Loras felt so many things at the same time that he was not able to express them in any way. The little strenght that he had left run out when he got up in a sudden movement and run towards him. But the only thing Loras accomplished to hug was air. He looked around without understanding, and the voice of Renly sounded again from the other end of the cell:

‘You can’t touch me’

‘You’re here’ Loras shouted.’I thought you were dead, I...’ and he made an attempt to get close him just before Renly repeated:

‘You can’t touch me, Loras’

Loras did not understand. He felt his forces abandoning him once again and let his back crash against the wall, slipping until he was sat on the floor.

Her mouth was so dry that he believed he would lose his sense. His eyes couldnt look away from Renlys.

‘Help me’ he pleaded in no sound higher than a whisper.

‘I can’t do that’

‘Kill me, then’.

Renly’s gesture broke. He moved forward to Loras, staying no farer than a bunch of centimeters, and bent, placing himself right in front. Loras could nearly rescue the air that he was dropping. Renly’s smell embraced him and he burst into tears, just like a child. He had missed him, but he hadn’t realised how much before that moment. He hugged his own knees, covering his face between them. His chest swam in bumps and Loras couldnt establish if his tears were caused by pain or relieve.

‘Don’t cry...’ Renly’s voice was as soft as a cuddle ’Please, Loras, don’t cry'.

‘Where were you?’ he spatted in anger ’All this time! You left me by myself.

‘I’ve always been here’

Loras looked at him, his sight was still blurred because of the tears, and Renly drew a caress on his cheek which nearly seemed real. Loras closed his eyes to bath himself in it and felt scared of opening them again.

‘You have to eat’ Renly said to him.

‘I’m not hungry’

‘You have to eat. If you don’t...’

‘If i don’t...what? Do you think i care? Do you think  there is still something I can care about at this point?

‘Not even me?’

Loras stayed quiet. The noose in his trhoat was about to choke him. The gaze he was offering was broken. He was no fool, he knew that it was not possible for Renly to be there. He had buried him himself, he had scratched the ground until his fingers bled, and then, he had fallen asleep over his litter, not caring for the rain nor the wind. If he could feel sorry for something in front of the sept or the damn seven was not for lying by his side, but for convincing him to carry out something that led him to death. After that, the tortures he had been put throught couldn’t hurt that much.

‘You’re not here’ Loras answered with dryness ‘Now it’s just me’.

‘And that’s why you have to eat’.

Among the silence only the broken breaths of Loras could be heard. He looked at Renly, lost, begging. For years he had thought about all the thing that he could no longer tell him, he prayed for having just a chance to shout all those words out to his face, to banish them from his inside to stop them from tormenting him day after day.

And yet, when he finally met him, all he felt capable of doing was to stare at him and cry.

What did the words matter? All he had to say could sum up in the tears that hadn’t stop to bath his face. Renly wasn’t crying, just looking at him firmly and softly, and Loras realized how far he was, how far he had always been.

‘Why?’ he asked ‘Why can’t I touch you?’

‘You know why...’

‘Why can’t I touch you?’

‘Loras’

‘Don’t call my name, please.’

‘Loras...’

‘I need to touch you’

Renly did not answer, and Loras took the silence as a permission, so he tried to stand again, but this time his legs couldnt manage to sustain and he fall flat against the floor. All the wounds ached, burning his skin, and his gesture broke into a grimace. If he could only stay there dumped forever, if he could only sleep and never wake up. If he could make everything end with just whising for it.

‘You have to be strong’ the soft voice of Renly whispered. ‘Everything is going to be OK’

‘Nothing is going to be OK’ Loras teeth clenched so hard that the blood has started to fall out his mouth. Rage climbed his throat as he spat it out. Vacant words of confort was the last thing he needed in that moment.

‘It will, and you’ll get over it. You’ll be happy again.’

‘Happy?’ Loras asked in a cynical laugh ‘What do you know? I haven’t been happy for so long. Not a bit, not just for a while. I can’t even fake it anymore. I just want it to end.

‘The Loras I knew wasn’t the kind that gives up’

‘The Loras you knew is more dead than you are’.

And Renly remained silent again. Loras kept lying on the stone, where the smell of dirt and urine was even more notorious, where he felt more miserable and more protected at the same time. He had gotten tired of getting up, he didn’t have any strenght left. Everytime he rose they found the way of tearing him down harder. He crawled throught the floor, with his throat empty, traying to find a wet corner, any lost drop that could calm down his thirst. Renly drew near him with a jar of fresh water in his hands, and when Loras rolled, he let the water wet his lips and clean his face, his hair. He felt nursed and protected. And he wished he wasn’t dreaming.

‘I loved you, you know?’ he said ‘I really did’.

‘I know’

‘It doesn’t matter how hard I try, nobody looks like you. I can’t make you go away. I don’t want you to go away.

Renly lied down by his side, and Loras turned aside to look at hiim. His whole body was aching. His whole soul was aching.

‘Im sorry’ he mumbled ‘I’m sorry for what I did to you.’

‘What you did to me…?'

‘I’m sorry you’re dead because of me. If i had known… If i had been there nobody would have touched you'.

‘You could not have done anything. It’s not your fault.’

‘I should have died with you’

‘And what had that been good for?

‘That way I wouldn’t have to miss you’

Renly smiled and Loras tried to give him back the smile but failed. He studied his features as if it was the first time he was seeing them, as if it was the last and he had to store every single detail in his mind for time not to wash it out. He studied his eyes, his nose, his lips, the tiny lunar on the left side of his chin, and the three days beard. Then the panic wrapped him and he came aware that a memory would never ever be enough.

‘I don’t want you to leave’ he conffessed desperately ‘Take me with you’

‘No’

‘Please’ he insisted.

‘It’s not your time’

Renly had looked away, now his gaze was lost under his eyeslit, with his head down and a couple of tufts covering part of his face. Loras chest was starting to hurt and the frustration of not being able to touch him, of not being able to have him, would make his head run crazy.

‘I need you’ he cried.

‘What you need is to eat’ Renly ataccked. And even if his voice was trying to sound authoritarian, to Renly it didn’t sound fiercer than a cat’s. ‘What you need is to stop feeling sorry for yourself. What you need is to pick up your pieces and get over this.

‘They won’t let me go’ He said in defeat.

And a whisper in his ear gave him goosebumps:

‘You’ll find a way. You always do’

Loras opened his mouth getting a bit closer to Renly's. The distance between them was not bigger than a bunch of milimmeters.

‘Will you wait for me?’he asked. And removed all distance, finally getting their lips together. He closed his eyes and let out a moan that got lost in Renly’s throat.

When he woke up he was all by himself again and a tear had remained sculpted across his face.

.

 


End file.
